Myanmar leader targets Vietnam trade in trip across region

Myanmar President Thein Sein pledged to boost trade with Vietnam as he
travels through Southeast Asia after agreeing to allow observers from the
region to monitor April 1 by-elections.

Thein Sein met in Hanoi yesterday with senior Communist party officials,
including Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, on a trip that will also feature
stops in Cambodia and Laos. The two countries aim to boost two-way trade to
$500 million by 2015 and strengthen ties on security, agriculture and tourism,
according to a statement on the Vietnamese government website.

Thein Sein’s two-day visit “significantly helps reinforce and boosts
bilateral relations between the two countries,” according to a statement on
Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs’s website citing President Truong Tan
Sang. The two nations agreed on the importance of maintaining peace in the
South China Sea, according to the statement, highlighting an area where Vietnam
has territorial disputes with China.

Myanmar has leveraged support from the 10-member Association of Southeast
Asian Nations, a grouping with about 600 million people, to press the U.S. and
Europe to lift sanctions. The former military dictatorship, which will chair
Asean for the first time in 2014, yesterday invited teams from the bloc to
observe by-elections on April 1 in which former political prisoner Aung San Suu
Kyi will participate.

The U.S. sees the special elections for 48 seats as a “critical moment” as
it considers lifting trade and financial restrictions imposed on Myanmar for
the past two decades, special envoy Derek Mitchell told reporters in Yangon on
March 15. Asean foreign ministers in January reiterated a call for Western
countries to lift sanctions against Myanmar. Oil and Gas

Vietnam is not listed among Myanmar’s top trading partners in data compiled
by its Central Statistical Organization. In 2008, Vietnam accounted for $20
million of the nearly $1 billion Myanmar received in foreign investment, the
statistics show.

That year, Myanmar signed a contract with Vietnam Oil & Gas Group, known
as PetroVietnam, to explore offshore block M-2. Under the contract,
PetroVietnam Exploration and Production Corp. holds 45 percent, Vietnam’s
Vietsovpetro holds 40 percent and Myanmar’s Eden group holds 15 percent,
according to the Myanmar Times.